I never really understood the paying real world money for better gear/experience/etc in a game. What's the point of playing the game then? I've always looked at paying money to gain an advantage in a game as equivalent to using exploits, cheat codes, or trainers.

I never really understood the paying real world money for better gear/experience/etc in a game. What's the point of playing the game then? I've always looked at paying money to gain an advantage in a game as equivalent to using exploits, cheat codes, or trainers.

+1

I couldn't agree more, I find the free-to-play games of the most boring and least rewarding games I've ever played. If you don't pay anything, you're always going to be the worst player, but spend $10 and you can end up winning every match, even if you have no skills. The games are horribly unbalanced and there's no motivation to keep playing.

That's not to say that I dislike games with no achievement or reward system, because 2 of my favorite games are UT2004 and Flatout 2, where online there are no leaderboards or awards. The difference with those games is you already have access to everything from the beginning, with the exception of a small handful of powerful vehicles/characters that you either need to earn or cheat to get.

Then you can look at the other extreme where by default everyone starts out with everything, including things that are basically cheats. An example of this is Saints Row 3. I never bought the game, because I knew it would lose its fun value within a couple weeks.